Ray Charles, pioneering innovator of soul music, was born on 23rd September 1930

We are a few days early with this, because of some date clashes. Born Ray Charles Robinson, the son of poor sharecroppers in Florida, on September 23rd 1930, Ray Chalres overcame the handicap of blindness to become perhaps the most important figure in soul music of the post-war decades. As part of a devout Christian family, Ray was involved in gospel music from an early age, and showed an early talent for music, a trait which developed as he lost his sight from the age of five, and took music lessons at school. His parents had both died by the time he was 15, and he was cared for by family friends, but began playing publicly in Florida and developed a remarkable sef-reliance and independence. he wanted to move to a big city, but thought new York and LA would be overpowering so went to Seattle, where he met Quincy Jones. He changes his name to avoid confusion with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, and began recording, first for Downbeat and then for Swingtime, and by 1949 had a No. 2 hit on the R&B chart with "Confession Blues". He had more sizeable hits over the next couple of years, and in 1953 he was signed by Ahmet Ertegun for his burgeoning Atlantic label. He had a string of R&B hits through the '50s, with tracks like "Hallelujah I love her so" and "I gotta woman", but it was "What'd I say" in 1959 that finally crossed over to the pop charts. He was one of the first black artists to secure creative freedom for his recording career, and in the early '60s he made an extraordinary musical move  with his landmark album "Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music", which some critics thought was a potentially disastrous experiment, but proved to be not only commercially successful but a brilliantly observed demonstration of the common ground between musical genres and ethnic groups. He remained a towering music figure through the rest of the century, receiving countless accolades and tributes. He remains one of those artists whose influence crosses successive generations, with many current stars citing his music as an inspiration. Acrobat has two albums of his recordings on catalogue - for details, click here.